I had a similar issues for the past few months with Freya 0.3.1. This was the final step in my repairs. The steps I did to finally resolve this issue was edited these files (take the time to make backups of each of these before starting these steps): sudo mc --->navigate to each of these files & using "F4">then editing the following files>CTRL+X>Y>keep file name the same. --->File list -> /etc/apt/sources.list --->added (for some reason they were deleted) ---> #### Elementary PPA - hxxp://www.elementaryos.com deb hxxp://ppa.launchpad.net/elementary-os/os-patches/ubuntu trusty main deb hxxp://ppa.launchpad.net/elementary-os/daily/ubuntu trusty main deb hxxp://ppa.launchpad.net/elementary-os/testing/ubuntu trusty main -> /etc/apt/sources.list.d/elmentary.list --->removed # (both lines were commented out) deb hxxp://ppa.launchpad.net/elementary-os/stable/ubuntu trusty main deb-src hxxp://ppa.launchpad.net/elementary-os/stable/ubuntu trusty main -> /etc/ls-release --->replaced (for some reason had been changed to Ubuntu 14.04) ----> DISTRIB_ID=Ubuntu DISTRIB_RELEASE=14.04 DISTRIB_CODENAME=trusty DISTRIB_DESCRIPTION="Ubuntu 14.04 LTS" ----Changed to reflect Elementary OS Freya DISTRIB_ID="elementary OS" DISTRIB_RELEASE=0.3.1 DISTRIB_CODENAME=freya DISTRIB_DESCRIPTION="elementary OS Freya" -> /etc/os-release --->replaced (for some reason had been changed to Ubuntu 14.04)----> NAME="Ubuntu" VERSION="14.04.1 LTS, Trusty Tahr" ID=ubuntu ID_LIKE=debian PRETTY_NAME="Ubuntu 14.04.1 LTS" VERSION_ID="14.04" HOME_URL="hxxp://www.ubuntu.com/" SUPPORT_URL="hxxp://help.ubuntu.com/" BUG_REPORT_URL="hxxp://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/" ---->Changed to reflect Elementary OS Freya NAME="elementary OS" VERSION="0.3.2 Freya" ID="elementary OS" ID_LIKE=ubuntu PRETTY_NAME="elementary OS Freya" VERSION_ID="0.3.1" HOME_URL="hxxp://elementary.io/" SUPPORT_URL="hxxp://elementary.io/support/" BUG_REPORT_URL="hxxps://bugs.launchpad.net/elementary/+filebug" (You must replace hxxp with http, due to site restrictions. Also files ls-release & os-release should not have spaces, the site bunched the information, so I added the spaces to make this post easier to read) Then I followed the steps here: sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get -f install sudo apt-get dist-upgrade sudo apt-get install --reinstall humanity-icon-theme elementary-icon-theme Now my Software Center works as it should. Hope this helps others and saves a great amount of time. <<<<WARNING>>>> You can potential bork your entire system. I do not recommend attempting this repair without feeling comfortable with using the command line.